Originally posted by unbound55

One of the problems with innovations is that the overwhelming majority of innovations are very small.  When you first get involved in some area, there appears to be lots of innovation...mostly because you weren't aware of the history behind the activities in that area.

 

For example, most people are taught in school that Marconi invented the radio.  However, he really only integrated some great work by several other inventors (mostly Tesla).  There are entire books on the activities of that era, but, to most people, the radio was suddenly born out of the blue in a huge burst of innovation.  MMOs are no different.  The marketing department tries to spin the incremental innovations as something earth-shattering...but peeling the onion reveals the incremental nature of the changes.

 

Compare WoW (or any other modern MMO) to MUD from 1980, and you can see absolutely *huge* improvements in experience.  But follow MUD step-by-step from 1980 to the modern MMO, and you really only find fairly small incremental changes and merges from other computer genre (obviously more graphically heavy than MUD  :-)   ).

 

There was a great 10 episode series in the late 70s called "Connections" that showed how some of the most amazing inventions of the modern age were nothing more than a lot of fairly small leaps.  It doesn't look like MMOs are growing any differently.

 

good point.

Indeed, too much innovation will leave you with a game and no players. As someone mentioned, there has been a lot of tweeks to the wheel. But, it's the wheel everyone is seeking. If you buy a game and get a piece of wood, then you may be disappointed. It's not what you were looking for and everything feels well -- funny.

It's something a lot of MUD developers faced in the 90's. Many developers were doing crazy innovative things with MUDs. However, their numbers were very small because everything felt so foreign to the players that played MUDs. There was too much innovation -- change -- and things got crazy.

If you ever fall into those discussions about how to do things right. It's mainly because things are done wrong in someones mind. What exactly is right, is what's already been accepted in one players mind. The right thing is not always about being right or wrong -- it's about what's accepted AS right. Acceptance goes hand-and-hand with what's familiar and or proven to be right. Then changing something that's consider right in order to be more innovative (i.e.: taking a different approach to combat for example) could lead you to many discussions on how things are wrong.

Just my 2 cents!

Originally posted by Miffy

We always hear or read developers saying things like "people hate grinding boring fetch quests, so we've added story" or "We've gotten rid of the slow combat of previous MMOs for something more action packed" lol. Then you get to play it on beta and the game is exactly like every other MMO you've ever played, only you can bet the new amazing combat is worse. Every time we read this and I remember all Paul Barnett's hype for WAr, yet once you play it, you realise it's all hype. I remember Paul Barnett talking about how the Squig herder keeps hitting the head of the Squig until it eats him and he's controlling it via the guts. Then playing the game, there's no gore because they took that out of a Warhammer game :S The animation never happens, it just appears from thin air. 

Now with SWTOR coming up it just stinks of this on how they're adding story to MMO's. I bet it is basically the first 20 levels of AoC or the DK starting area in WoW lol, we'll be doing the exact same thing but cause it's Bioware everyone loves it. Frigging watching the videos I saw one of the quests to kill however number of these beasts in some cave.... woo sounds so different and Epic lol.

Funny thing I find is the beta testers will claim how the game is innovative and fresh, for whatever reason. They flame anyone else who says any different until the thread is locked. So everyone thinks the game will be amazing and all the previews are glowing, cause they have to make them good because the game isn't final yet. Once released the reviews come out, it's mediocre and all the fanbois go on damage control, telling everyone to go back to WoW. Suddenly everyone is disappointed and wondering why they believed the hype for the 15th time in a row lol.

Every MMO that was good, has just bee good. The developers never tried to hide anything and you weren't waiting till after launch for info because of NDAs and that. It's hard to explain but they were just made naturally and didn't have all these people trying to defend them or anything. If you suspect something to be off in the footage you've seen, don't say "oh it's beta" because game design is decided pre alpha. Most content is in during Alpha and beta is only bug fixing and stress testing for the most part, some companies will add content in, but never change game design or character models etc etc. 

 You are part of the problem especially with SWTOR.  You went in with your own ideas about the game and then believe them as if they were facts.  Stop being delusional, grow up and get over youself.

I don't know why the OP is being flamed tbh, his assessment of the MMO market is pretty accurate. MMO innovation is at an all time low despite repeated sales pitch by other games.

Graphics are being innovated as ever, but what hes talking about is actually solid gameplay mechnics that just work. If anything  things are coming back full circle with games like Darkfall and Mortal Online trying to bring back the Ultima Online sandbox era,  it's obvious even some devs think we need to step back, take a long look at where the genre has been and is now and figure out where things have gone wrong for so many people who are pissed off with the whole genre.

WOW which ever way you look at it was a polished gem that took parts from many past MMO's and made it all work together in a popular way, but the downside to its success has been it's pretty much stagnated MMO innovation by being used as a mold for all following MMO's (all dev's want a piece of it's pie).

Devs are innovating currently using WOW'esque mechincs as a foundation model. What should be happening is innovating from scratch and redesigning MMO's from the ground up to actually give us a game that feels different. Yes, that is financially risky for any company but its the only way to get away from the stagnant market...someone needs to stick their neck out and do something different...not just say it and then rehash old mechincs with new graphics/animations.

Originally posted by Miffy

 

Funny thing I find is the beta testers will claim how the game is innovative and fresh, for whatever reason. They flame anyone else who says any different until the thread is locked. So everyone thinks the game will be amazing and all the previews are glowing, cause they have to make them good because the game isn't final yet. Once released the reviews come out, it's mediocre and all the fanbois go on damage control, telling everyone to go back to WoW. Suddenly everyone is disappointed and wondering why they believed the hype for the 15th time in a row lol.

this is pretty simple, game developers rarely if ever want the betas to actualy beta test anything, they just want to create hype and get legions of zombie minions.

Usually the critics get shot down in the betas and end up banned from the forums, devs only want to hear the yessirs and fanbois.

Then the game gets released and, of course, it falls flat on the face due to each and every of the flaws already pointed during the beta phase by critics, which devs did absolutly nothing to fix....

funny as it sounds, fanbois are a game's worst enemies, they always do a damn better job that the most hatefull troll at choking and killing a game